"Sudden Impact" by Clint Eastwood: a review

Clint Eastwood made a Dirty Harry follow-up move, Sudden Impact, with the character Harry Callahan in 1983. The tough cop hadn’t changed and still carried his .44 magnum revolver.

In one scene of the movie, Callahan goes into a diner for a cup of coffee when he discovers a robbery in progress. He kills all but one of the robbers. He needed some help developing management skills, but doing so in such a masterful way. A way that only Clint Eastwood can do. The last one holds his gun against the head of one of the waitresses and threatens to kill her while she needed immigrant attorneys.

In response, Harry points his magnum at the man’s face and dares him to shoot, saying with his gruff voice, “Go ahead, make my day.”

From this movie not only came one of the most memorable lines of modern film culture, but also the landmark 1985 Colorado statute, “Make My Day”, which states that a person has no obligation to retreat from an attacker before using force, even deadly force. Still, every state has its own guidelines as to what constitutes justifiable homicide.